On the warm summer afternoon of June 17, 1934, thousands gathered at a beautiful, newly built, rustic log lodge, “nestled in a little ravine in the pine woods just south of the city”, to dedicate this great gift given to the citizens of Huntsville, Texas, by Robert A. Josey, a local self made millionaire and generous philanthropist. His gift, the Robert A. Josey Boy Scout Lodge, was given to the Boy Scouts of Huntsville. Thanks to his contributions this local landmark has served this organization for 75 years.
Mr. Josey was said to be “too modest” as all of Huntsville showed their appreciation for this lodge given by him to the local Boy Scouts of America. Marcellus E. Foster, founder of the Houston Chronicle, who grew up here in Huntsville, showed up to give tribute to Mr. Josey, despite a broken vertebra and the hot summer weather.
“Now you may suffer from the heat but my friend, Tony, (and he pointed to R. A. Josey, with whom he played on the site as a boy) my friend, Tony, is suffering from embarrassment. He doesn’t like this. He’s too modest… I wish there were more R. A. Joseys in the world. I wish there were more good boys to know their duty to their God, to their country, to their community, for these boys of today will be the R. A. Joseys of the future.”
Robert A. Josey’s Scout Lodge is a gift that is still cherished to this day by the Boy Scouts of Walker County. To Mr. Josey, who was a very smart businessman, he was making an investment in the wellbeing of his community. M. Harrison of Longview, President of The East Texas Chamber of Commerce said this at the dedication ceremony, “This lodge is an investment in human character that will pay eternal dividends. It is dedicated to those principle of righteousness, thrift, reverence and loyalty that have made America great.”
Robert Anthony Josey was born in Huntsville on March 28, 1870. He was the son of Evander Theophilus Josey and Mellissa Jane Cotton. Evander’s father, Theophilus Josey moved to Huntsville from South Carolina with his wife Mary Wilson, when Evander was a child. In Huntsville, Theophilus bought a house known as the “Raven” from Gen. Sam Houston. E.T. Josey became a teacher in Huntsville and ran a boarding home, until 1861 when he volunteered to serve in the Confederate Army, serving in Company K, Brown’s Regiment for four years, earning many decorations. After the war, he returned to Huntsville and married Mellissa Jane Cotton and together they had seven children. E. T. Josey served as a Walker County Tax Collector and was a deacon for the First Baptist Church in Huntsville for almost 60 years.
Robert A. Josey grew up in Huntsville and attended primary school there and after that he attended Sam Houston Teachers College, graduating in 1890. He also got a degree at Texas A&M University. In 1901 he began his career in the wild oil drilling campaigns of Spindletop field in Beaumont, Texas, where he is said to have drilled the second oil well there. He amassed a sizeable fortune and founded more wells in Oklahoma, where he was a leading figure in the emerging oil business there. After he sold his holding to the Texas Company for a reported $10 million in 1930, he moved to Houston. Mr. Josey acquired extensive holdings in the East Texas oil fields and held those until his death in 1954.
Even though Mr. Josey moved to Houston, he never forgot about his hometown of Huntsville. He performed many services and gave much to the town through his philanthropic work. In 1933, he donated $2500 for the creation of a new loanable fund to Sam Houston Teachers College to aid students who were trying to acquire a higher education, but lacked the funding necessary, especially during the era of the Great Depression. The fund was named “The E.T. and Melissa Josey Loan Fund”, in honor of his mother and father. Mr. Josey was quoted as saying:
“People have been forced by the happenings of the recent past few years to curtail their allowable expenditures for educational purposes. I believe that the maintenance of our civilization and the continued enjoyment of its benefits require educational training It is more than an individual question; it is a social question. I desire some part in encouraging the continued attendance of young people upon our schools and colleges. That the opportunity exists in Huntsville affords me much pleasure.”
In 1933, a local group headed by Tom Ball, (a thrice former Huntsville mayor, prominent local banker, and former U.S. congressman, for whom the city of Tomball was named) , asked Mr. Josey to help in the project to construct a building for the Boy Scouts. He happily agreed to help and sent Mr. Ball a letter giving him and the committee $10,000 for purchase of the land and construction of the lodge. The material for the construction was donated by J. P. Gibbs of Gibbs Brothers and Co. and included logs and stones from local forests and quarries. Lewis. E. Meekins of Austin was hired as contractor to build the log cabin style lodge designed by architect Mike Mebane and based on a scale model made by the Scouts themselves. The structure was built in 75 days as a Civil Works Administration project with a construction team of about 50 local men* and finished in 1934. The CWA provided additional funds for construction of the building, $8,000 for labor costs and $2,000 for materials.* The CWA was headed in Huntsville by
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